Wednesday 23 December 2020
Sunday Letter
Benefice of St Mary’s Chard, Combe St Nicholas,
Wambrook and Whitestaunton
20th December 2020
Gaudete, Christus est
Natus!
Rejoice always, Christ
is born. Do we have much to be joyful
about? 2020 is a year we would all like
to forget and we are quite rightly anxious about what our Christmas will be
like this year. So why am I telling you to rejoice always?
This week I have been
reading Psalm 126. In it the Psalmist writes: “The Lord has done great things
for us, and we are glad”. Back then it seems God did things, God saved us, God
acted definitively.
What about now? Where do we see signs of God doing
things? Well, let’s start with our own
lives and recognize all those times when God has blessed us and when he has
comforted us and seen us through difficult times, painful times. Then let’s look out at our community and see
all the good that have come about, especially this year, in response to
Covid-19, when the people of Chard and the villages responded so wonderfully.
Then let’s look at our world and see all those who are working for peace, those who are providing food, shelter and
safety for those in refugee camps, those
working to make people’s lives better through environmental projects and bring
them hope for the future. It would be
easy to be cynical in these times, but with God there is always hope.
We can live with
confidence in the future, and yet live the lives we are meant to live here and
now. In Advent, we remember John the Baptist who came to point others to that
which was to come, confident in the promises of the past, and so we too can be
like that.
John looks back to the
promises of the past in order to point to the future. He is the voice crying in the
wilderness. In these wilderness times
that we are living through, we can also listen out for the promise of the
future, while not neglecting to live as fully as we can now, even in our
present restrictions.
John, like the writer
of Psalm 126, is part of the telling and retelling of God’s work in history, so
that we may recognise it when it breaks into the world in the form of the
Christ child
Because, whatever our
circumstances this Christmas – it is not ‘cancelled’ as some would like to tell
us. No.
God has become Emmanuel, ‘God with us’.
And the good news is
that even this Christmas, when we may not be able to celebrate as we would
want, God is still breaking into our world offering us glimmers of light and
hope.
What better light could
we possibly have than the Light of the World being born into a poor family in
an occupied and troubled land. What
better hope could we possibly have than ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us….full
of grace and truth’.
God became a human so
that he could enter entirely into human experience and never be parted from
us. If this isn’t worth celebrating at
Christmas, even a Christmas such as this one, then what is?
So please do have a
Happy Christmas and let us live in the hope of the Christ child, born, as the
carol says, ‘to raise the sons of earth, born to give us second birth’.
Gaudete, Christus est
Natus!
Rejoice always, Christ
is born.
Rev’d Ann
(Chard)
*As we will not be
holding our Christingle services this year, we have decided that the collection
at all the services in Chard over Christmas will be for the Children’s
Society.
We will however be
putting a Christingle service up on Youtube and will send the link out to
everyone. Please encourage your family
and friends to watch.
(Combe)
The Christingle 24th
5pm and the Carol Service from Combe 6.00pm will be on the facebook link live https://www.facebook.com/groups/4360858437322126.
The Carol Service at
6pm at both Wambrook and Combe will be in person, masks must be worn. Dress up
warm as Wambrook is outside.
Thursday 10 December 2020
Christmas Services
December
Services in Whitestaunton
Dec 13th
6.30pm Carol Service
Dec 20th
9.15 am Holy Communion
Dec 25th Christmas Day
9.15 am Holy Communion
Dec 27th
10.00 am Holy
Communion at Chard
live streamed, the link will be on the St Mary’s website
10.30 am Holy
Communion at Combe
To keep us
safe all services will require social distancing of 6ft, except for family bubbles
of no more than six, and masks to be worn please.
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